Think you use a lot of data on your smartphone now? You haven’t seen anything yet, according to our latest Ericsson Mobility Report.
We predict an average smartphone use of 22 GB per month in 2021, if you’re in North America. The corresponding figure for Western Europe is 18 GB per month. Compare this to even the larger current data plans, and you’ll get an idea of the change that lies ahead.
These new numbers represent a significant increase in Ericsson’s mobile data traffic forecast, mostly based on fresh data from network measurements during the last months. It turns out LTE users consume more mobile data than expected.
At this moment mobile data traffic is growing 65 percent year over year. To put it into perspective, 22 GB per month smartphone usage corresponds to 15-30 minutes of video streaming per day. And video is a large part of what we consume over the mobile networks. Our measurements show that half of all mobile data traffic is video today, and six years from now video will make up almost 70 percent of the traffic. That’s a lot of cat videos!
We watch video on our mobile devices at home and on the go. Myself I do enjoy the occasional Orange is the New Black and House of Cards episodes, although I admit both are an acquired taste. Both of these series are original programming from Netflix, and we have learned that in markets where Netflix is present, its share of mobile video traffic can be up to 20 percent. But YouTube still dominates video traffic in general, and in many mobile networks it accounts for up to 70 percent of total video traffic.
Since 2012 there has been a 71 percent increase in the number of people who watch video on their smartphones, according to the 2015 Ericsson ConsumerLab TV and Media Report. When taking tablets and laptops into consideration as well, almost two-thirds of the time spent watching TV and video among teenagers is on these mobile devices.
And if you think about how much time many teenagers spend glued to YouTube or Vine or Keek, then maybe even our new numbers look a little conservative!
